WAHM Timesavers

I was washing dishes tonight thinking about this post. I was washing dishes by hand because the dishwasher is still broken. It's broken because hubby has been sick all week and the last thing on his mind has been fixing the dishwasher. If he did dishes once in a while, I bet he'd have fixed it immediately but alas, I did teach The Boy how to wash dishes by hand which is a valuable skill. Wish I knew how to fix it myself but then again, hubby needs to feel needed :)

I taught my son about soaking which can be a time saver and rinsing in hot so that the dishes practically dry themselves and I was thinking about time savers while washing the dishes tonight.

I was saving some time even while washing dishes because although it took me longer to do them manually than it would have taken me to load my dear dishwasher, I was multi-tasking by brewing up some blog and article ideas for this and for a project I'm working on this weekend.

Here are a few things I was thinking about as time savers when you're a busy work at home parent.

1) Delegate. I can't stress this enough. It doesn't always work well but it helps. Even though the kids don't do the best job at cleaning, you can cope with tidy and the responsibility is good for them. I even find little jobs for my four year old like lining up the shoes nicely in the closet or watering Mommy's houseplants. It all adds up. He also does great with the Swiffer Sweeper. Dust gets cleared and it is fun for him (for now, haha)

2) Use cooking spray. Cooking spray rocks because it saves oodles of time on pots and pans. They're so much easier to clean. Even better than cooking spray is tin foil because it can go over baking dishes to save you from washing them altogether. And can be great for wrapping things up as leftovers that go into the fridge because you can throw it out without washing a dish if it doesn't get eaten

3) Zip Loc bags. Use these instead of containers in the fridge and freezer whenever possible. They are much easier to label, much easier to toss in the bin when the food goes bad and great for organizing just about anything edible or non-edible.

4) One pot dinners like with your crockpot and double duty meals. I write plenty of double duty recipes at my Cooking With Love blog. This is where you cook once and eat many times and not even eat just the same thing but getting creative by cooking a roast and then turning leftovers into submarine sandwiches day two, stew on day three and beef pot pies for the freezer for a day after that. They help immensely in terms of saving cooking time.

5) Double duty housework. Clean the bathroom or organize it while your young child is in the tub or dust while watching TV.

6) Fold laundry at the computer. While I'm waiting for pages to load I do things like that including dusting or paying bills, etc. Don't overdo it on multitasking or you'll develop Writer's ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and find yourself less than productive but a bit of multi-tasking is something us Moms are made for.

7) Exercise at your desk. I sit on a stability ball sometimes or lift hand
weights while I work. Sometimes I even rig the stationary bike at my computer and balance the keyboard on the handlebars.

I'm sure I have plenty of other time saving tips I've picked up as a WAHM over the past few years and I'm sure this will be the first of many time saving posts.

8) This last one for today is vital: Loosen standards once in a while. Sometimes you need to just relax or let things go a little. The dishes will keep, your life won't.

Right? Write!